


Death Precedes Life

by evengayerpanic



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evengayerpanic/pseuds/evengayerpanic
Summary: When death comes for her, she greets it like an old friend - no, she greets it like a lover. With a smile, with a fluttering of her heart, with nothing but peace.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie, Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma
Comments: 4
Kudos: 144





	Death Precedes Life

**Author's Note:**

> This show had me so emotional after watching it that I couldn't help but add on to it, I swear, I have so many ideas for just how hauntingly beautiful this was, my heart is in tatters, so I hope you enjoy this. Major spoilers ahead, obviously, so please don't read unless you've finished the show.

When death comes for her, she greets it like an old friend - no, she greets it like a lover. With a smile, with a fluttering of her heart, with nothing but peace.

She’s been back at Bly for three months, ever since she fell from a ladder while pruning and broke a hip. 

It was the only natural place to go, she decided, as she felt the cold icy fingers of tomorrow brush over her wrist while she lay in hospital for almost a week.

While recovering, she had called Flora, who in turn called Miles and the two of them had set it all up.

Bly still remained in the family, though none of them had stepped foot in the building for over forty years, and so it hadn’t been hard for the two children (though they were hardly children at forty-eight and fifty years, respectively) to make the arrangements.

Miles had hired a live-in nursemaid, and Flora, whom lived a few hours away, left her family each weekend to care for her oldest friend until the nurse returned each Sunday evening to resume her patients care.

The Gardener lived back at Bly for three months; and much like the Lady of the Lake, the Gardener too followed a particular routine as she lived day by day. 

She would sleep; in the room that had been her dearest loves, she would lay her head to rest each night and pray to slip away, to return home to 1987.

She would wake; alone and cold in the bed, the thought of the Au Pair slowly fading from her mind as the nurse entered her room to help her ready the day.

She would walk; through the grounds of Bly, the memories coming and going of every single place her lover had touched, greenhouse, forest, kitchens and more. The only place she did not walk, was to the lake, for the possibility of seeing her loves body, what remained of it, haunted her waking dreams.

And she would wait; each day, each night, Jamie would wait to see her beloved again, to be claimed by death and find her way back to the arms of her Dani.

She would sleep.

She would wake.

She would walk.

And she would wait.

Until the day Jamie didn’t need to wait anymore.

It was a Saturday morning. Her nurse had just left for the weekend, and Flora had been running late due to her daughter having an early morning dance practice that her husband hadn’t been available to take her too. It was only a few hours, but hours were enough.

Flora had arrived to find Bly empty.

Jamie was not in the kitchen, drinking a cup of awful tea that Flora always teased her for making so horribly when she knew how to make a proper cuppa.

Jamie was not in her room, nor the parlour, nor her gardens, reminiscing about the past that Flora had unfortunately almost forgotten entirely.

Flora found Jamie by the lake, sitting on the ground and staring at the water with tears in her eyes.

“It’s almost time for her to come get me.”

Flora had begged and pleaded for her dear friend to come inside, to come where it was warm and comfortable, but even as the cold ground seeped into her pajamas, she still would not move from the lake.

“I can’t leave... Not until she comes.”

It was noon when Flora called Miles, voice wracked with sobs. “It’s time... You need to come home.”

He arrived shortly after dinner, finding his sister wrapped in a sweater, sitting beside a blanket draped Jamie, the two of them having not left the ground.

“Come inside, you’ll catch pneumonia.” He demanded of the woman who had once chased him around her gardens, clucking mad after he trampled her peonies.

“Your back probably hurts, lets get you in a comfortable chair inside.” He encouraged the woman who had once plucked him up off the ground and nursed his bloodied knee back to health when he had fallen from his bike as a child and scraped himself on the rough cobblestone, reminding him the whole time that he cried of how tough he was.

“Please don’t leave us yet.” He begged of the woman who had once been his family, who had cared for him and his sister, even if they did pick her roses and shook ladders from underneath her.

But she wouldn’t listen.

And so, Miles and Flora sat beside her in front of the lake for hours, just staring until the moon came out and the night went quiet, and Jamie, their gardener, their friend closed her eyes for the last time.

When Flora noticed that Jamie had stopped moving, stopped speaking, a soft cry had spilled over her lips as she cried out in a dull pain for her brother, “Miles.”

“I know.” He breathed out, his breath hitching as he too noticed that she had slipped away in the night.

The boy and the girl, no longer children, carried the Gardener back to Bly; carefully, gingerly, just like she had done once for a shell-shocked and grieving young Flora over forty years ago one fateful morning.

They brought her to her bed, laid her down, and cried for the memories that they remembered, and for the memories that they didn’t remember as well

_________________ 

Jamie remained at the lake, no, not physically remained, but with everything else that mattered

She remained by the water until she saw the lake begin to ripple and part, something coming out of the surface... no, not something, not someone. 

The Lady of the Lake. Dani. Came to the surface.

And so she greets death; with a smile, with a fluttering of her heart, with a sprint and a hug and a kiss and a cry of, “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve waited so long to hold you again.” Dani responds, clinging to Jamie tightly, a sigh of relief and happiness runs through one and out the other connecting them.

“I’m sorry that it took me so lon-” Jamie starts but is cut off by her love’s lips, Dani doesn’t care how long it’s taken, she just cares that she’s there.

“Long is good. Long means that you lived.”

And lived she has, Jamie has seen so much that Dani never got to experience... at least not physically. 

She recounts watching Flora graduate, seeing Miles take over his Uncle’s business, a first row seat to Flora’s marriage to her beloved, being the one Miles called first when he got his heart broken, holding Flora’s first child, and second, and third. She has lived for all that Dani could not, it was her lifelong promise.

It’s through the twinkle of Dani’s eye that Jamie knows she’s seen it all too, if slightly differently than her.

They hold each other, heads pressed together, hands linked until Dani says the words Jamie has waited thirty years to hear. “Do you want to go home?”

She says yes.

And as it turns out, home is exactly where Jamie thought it would be. They enter the doors of Bly and it’s like time has been rewound through four decades.

The modern effects, like flat screen televisions and cordless phones have disappeared. The old furnishings have returned, and the smell of Owen’s cooking, and as Dani and Jamie enter the kitchen, they are far from alone, the smiles of their family lighting the room and welcoming them back home.

Henry is not there; for Henry Wingrave, whom died a decade earlier, his home is not the walls of Bly, at least, not the year that they are there. His home is with Charlotte and Dominic, in a time where he still has the woman he loves, and his brother still cares for him. He spends his days there. They never see him, but they know he is happy and that is all that matters.

Miles and Flora never come back to them either. Years down the line, when Miles dies an old man in his wife’s arms, he is welcomed home by his parents, by his Uncle, and eventually his own wife. His home is with them instead, in a time that never existed, but they know he is happy and that is all that matters.

Flora does come back to them, if only briefly, she returns as a child and runs through the manor, her exuberance warming each of the family members that the Manor claimed. They smile even as she leaves, joining her husband and her own children as they pass after her. She’s there for what feels like only a moment, then gone, but they know she is happy, and once again... that is all that matters.

Home for Jamie never goes away though.

Her and Dani spend the rest of eternity in Bly; with Owen, with Hannah, with Rebecca, with each other.

They sleep; wrapped in each other’s arms every night, sometimes they do more than sleep, neither one getting older or changing, just remaining the way they always should have been. 

They wake; to greet the day, to taste Owen’s cooking, to reminisce with Hannah, to talk with Rebecca. The days never get monotonous, home never should, and this is home... this is family.

They walk; revisiting themselves in the greenhouse, what could have happened if they had never been interrupted, revisiting the moon flower and it never dying no matter how many nights pass. 

They wait; for the shoe to drop, for eternity to be over, for something to go wrong because all any of them have known is that something can always lurk in the darkness, to take you from your love, from your life.

But eternity never ends, family never ends, home never ends, they all remain in exactly the way that they should have always been.

Rebecca.

Hannah.

Dani.

Owen.

And lastly, Jamie.

Vibrant. Full of Life. Happy.

Together.


End file.
